INDIA ON ELECTIONEERING EDGE

By M H Ahssan

The world's biggest and most unruly democracy observes election month. In what is being touted as the world's largest democratic voting exercise, India is in the throes of general elections to choose 543 members to its 15th Lok Sabha, or parliamentary lower house. More than 714 million voters – twice the population of the US and 10 times that of France – are exercising their franchise between April 16 and May 13.

The scale of the exercise is mind-boggling. For logistical and security reasons, the voting will be staggered over five stages involving 6.5 million staff where 4,617 candidates, representing 300-odd parties, will seek office. Across 828,804 polling stations, 1.3 million electronic voting machines (EVMs) will be deployed, watched over by 2 million security personnel. The results will be announced on May 16.

However, while the elections will provide considerable political theatre, analysts warn of a fractured mandate from voters disenchanted about a campaign devoid of strong national issues and concerned with a flagging economy. Polls indicate that neither the ruling Congress party, which leads the governing United Progressive Alliance coalition, nor the main opposition party – the right-wing, Hindu Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) -- will win enough seats in the Parliament to form a majority. What looks more feasible is an unwieldy coalition of multifarious regional parties that will be swept into power at the center.

Not that this was entirely unexpected. Both the Congress and the BJP have lost political ground in many states, powerful regional parties have gained prominence and find themselves moving towards the national center stage.

With the demise of single-party governments in India (the last such government at the center was formed by the Congress Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi's assassinated husband, in 1989), local parties are drawing sustenance from caste and regional issues and will play a vital role in shaping the contours of national coalition governments. According to poll predictions, this time round, regional parties will likely take as many as half of the Lok Sabha's 543 seats.

Given this political scenario, it is tough to predict who India's next prime minister will be. The ruling Congress' candidate, Manmohan Singh, 76, has been attacked by the BJP for being a weak leader who takes his orders from Sonia Gandhi, chairperson of the UPA coalition. But the economist, the antithesis of a Machiavellian Indian politician, has a few things going for him. He can take credit for holding together a clumsy coalition formed in 2004 when the previous coalition headed by the BJP, the National Democratic Alliance, came undone.

Singh, the architect of India's economic reforms in the 1990s, has also presided over unprecedented double-digit economic growth. He has also helped to raise India's international profile by pushing through a controversial civil nuclear treaty with the US. In fact because there's really no strong anti-incumbency factor at play against Singh, analysts say, and because the BJP is largely issueless, he may well retain power.

At the last election, in 2004, for instance, the Congress took 145 of India's 543 parliamentary seats, only slightly up from the anemic 114 in 1999.

Under Sonia Gandhi's 38-year-old son, Rahul Gandhi, who fortuitously lacks his mother's disadvantage of foreign birth, a serious opposition issue, and shares her powerful dynastic name, the Congress hopes to cash in on India's young demographic. Two-thirds of India's 1.2 billion people are below 35 years. If the Congress does retain power in the election, most expect Rahul to take over the prime ministerial reins from Singh within a year or so. The economist is getting on in years and has just recuperated from bypass surgery that incapacitated him for weeks.

Not that age is a deterrent for prime ministerial hopefuls in India. The BJP's candidate, L.K. Advani, is 82 and despite his age – or perhaps because of it – has been assiduously wooing India's young by projecting himself as a 'young-at-heart' leader. In fact his global online campaign to woo voters is being touted as one of the most ambitious in modern political history.

Uttar Pradesh, India's largest state and its most politically sensitive, sends 80 members to Parliament. Although once a Congress stronghold, the state is now dominated by two caste-based parties, Bahujan Samaj Party led by another PM-hopeful, Mayawati, and Samajwadi Party, with Mulayam Singh Yadav as its leader.

Mayawati bases her support on Dalits, known in past decades as untouchables, and could become premier if she manages to pull off an alliance with left parties in the amorphous 'Third Front'. The Third Front, the only viable alternative to a Congress- or BJP-led coalition, is an alliance of left-leaning and regional parties.

In recent weeks, a Fourth Front has also come into being, comprised of disparate regional parties such as the Samajwadi Party, another caste-based party from Uttar Pradesh, and the Rashtriya Janata Dal from Bihar. While this faction is unlikely to form a government by itself, it has benefited politically with support from Chiranjeevi, a popular Telugu-language movie star, who last year formed his own party Praja Rajam in India's southern state of Andhra Pradesh.

But regardless of who comes to power at the center, the going will be far from easy. The current election comes in the midst of the global economic slump, which has hit India, cutting forecast 2009 gross domestic product growth to 5.1 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund. India also faces grave terror threats from across all its borders, especially from Pakistan as demonstrated by the 26/11 Mumbai massacre, a brutal attack on the country's financial capital that killed 164 people and destroyed property worth millions.

Domestic violence is a nuisance too. The first phase of the current elections was marred by Naxalite violence in four states that killed 18 people, including five polling officials and 10 security personnel. Polling booths were set afire and a gun battle between Naxals and security forces in Chattisgarh left two jawans, or private security guards, dead.

Be that as it may, what augurs well for India is the fact its democracy is still robust, the country enjoys enduring civilian rule and has a free press, a signal that whoever wins, it should be a largely free and fair election.

Burma at the edge of 'crime' culture

By Kajol Singh

Fake Viagra, America's anti-Saddam Hussein playing cards, Marlboros stuffed with Burmese tobacco, and the skulls and skins of endangered animals are just some of the hustles in this squalid, corrupt, suspicious border town.

Buddhist monks, wrapped in sacred saffron-colored robes, flock here from monasteries in Thailand to stock up on cheap counterfeit movie videos and freshly ripped music discs, brought in from China, Burma's northern neighbor. Foreigners from all over the world trickle into this tattered town's bazaar in eastern Burma, a country also known as Myanmar, to buy well-made faux designer fashions from small, brightly-lit, modern boutiques

Pirated name-brand accessories, such as Christian Dior sunglasses, are hawked in nearby street stalls Uninhibited outdoor displays offer entire pelts from endangered clouded spotted leopards and other animals. Monkey skulls, bear paws and a variety of claws, internal organs and blood-infused potions are also publicly on sale, alongside Buddhist and animist talismans and icons.

Burmese men, women and children -- each wearing a chest-high, square plastic basket held by a cloth strap around their neck -- roam the crowded lanes, demanding people buy their pills, cigarettes, knives, lighters, and erotic videos. Their Viagra and Cialis medicine packets are professionally labeled, but officials throughout Asia warn that such privately sold pills are worthless or dangerous counterfeits.

Their cigarettes include cartons of Marlboros, Camels, Kents, and other famous brands, but customers say the cigarettes have been painstakingly emptied and restuffed with harsh, inferior, Burmese tobacco.

Bizarrely, the street sellers' baskets also offer new decks of playing cards featuring photographs of Iraq's late dictator Saddam Hussein and his lieutenants, most of them now captured or dead. The playing cards became famous when Americans distributed them in Iraq during the US military invasion, as hand-sized wanted posters.

Here in Tachilek, the decks are labeled in broken English: "Issued by Intelligence Agency of United States of America," and adorned with a US flag and American Eagle seal. The Ace of Spades, titled: "Saddam Husayn Al-Tikriti, President," is displayed face up in the basket, for customers interested in haggling. DVDs featuring nude women are also offered in the baskets, alongside Zippo lighters and big pocket knives.

Tachilek is a small town, and most foreign visitors come to shop for its dubious products, though Buddhist temples, a casino, and other sites attract some sightseers. To enter Burma, foreigners arrive from Mae Sai town, located on the northernmost tip of Thailand.

After passing through both countries' small, cramped, immigration and customs buildings, they walk across a short, two-lane bridge spanning a narrow, polluted river, which forms part of the Thai-Burma border.Located in what could be a lucrative cross-roads for import and export businesses, Tachilek is mostly a cluster of wooden shanties, bleak tea stalls, a dismal commercial district, and a garishly expensive golf course and hotel complex.

One of Tachilek's few tourist sites is a building where a group of minority Padaung tribal women are displayed. The females, known as "long-necked women," reveal how they wear spiraling brass coils around their neck, giving them a giraffe-like appearance.

Burma is the largest country in mainland Southeast Asia. But it has been strangled for decades by U.S.-led international sanctions, which are part of Washington's unsuccessful bid to force regime change, amid hopes that democracy may flourish. As a result of the economic and political stalemate, and the regime's brutal repression, most Burmese are impoverished and live in despair. Money is so scarce that many Buddhist novices and monks disobey their religion's discipline and openly beg for alms, instead of silently and passively awaiting possible donations.

The military regime however struts atop a pyramid of wealth, and exploits Burma's natural resources, underpaid workers, and neighboring countries which are willing to break the boycotts.

Hidden Darkness: Child Sexual Abuse in India

By M H Ahssan

An overwhelming number of India’s children face unwanted attention from sexual predators.

After a brilliant 16-year-old New Delhi girl repeatedly complained last month that her mathematics teacher was “touching and fondling her private parts,” the upshot was a long way from what anybody bargained for. When the girl’s parents complained, the principal called them “regressive” and blamed them for damaging the school’s reputation. The girl now stays at home to help cook and clean, her school bag lying in a locked cupboard, her scholastic career over.

The story of the girl, referred to only as Seema, is depressingly familiar, resonating across large parts of India, where abuse is a a startling everyday reality for as many as half of the country’s children, according to a just-released 13-state National Study on Child Sexual Abuse conducted by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, UNICEF and Save The Children.

It is a long-hidden issue that India is finally beginning to wrestle with. The government moved recently to establish a National Commission for Protection of Children's Rights and plans are afoot to present an Offences Against Children (Prevention) Bill in the Parliament. The proposed document has specific sections dealing with various crimes against children, including sale/transfer, sexual assault, sexual/physical/emotional abuse, commercial sexual exploitation, child pornography, grooming for sexual purpose, incest, corporal punishment, bullying and economic exploitation.

The scale of abuse, according to the national study, is far worse than anybody had thought. It reports that 69 per cent of all Indian children are victims of physical, mental or emotional abuse, with New Delhi’s children facing an astounding abuse rate of 83.12 percent.

The survey, which involved interviews with 12,447 children, also highlights that it is usually family members (89 percent) who perpetrate such crimes and that more boys face physical abuse (72.61) than girls (65 per cent). Overall, Indian children were found to be victims of a slew of sexual crimes -- rape, sodomy, exposure to pornographic material, fondling, forcible kissing and sexual advances, among others.

The study also notes that child sexual abuse in India begins as early as five, ratchets up dramatically during pre-pubescence and peaks at 12 to 16 years. Some 21 percent of respondents acknowledged experiencing severe sexual abuse like rape, sodomy, fondling or exposure to pornographic material. Ironically, 71 per cent of sexual assault cases in India go unreported.

Nor is the study an aberration. As long ago as the mid 1990s, Samvada, a non-governmental organization in Karnataka, surveyed girls aged 15 to 21 from 11 schools and reported that 47 percent of the respondents were molested or experienced sexual overtures, 15 percent of them under the age of 10. Another 15 percent said they had experienced serious forms of sexual abuse including rape – 31 percent of that group were under the age of 10 when the abuses took place.

India is home to more than 375 million children, comprising nearly 40 percent of the country’s population, the largest number of minors in any country in the world. Despite its ethos of non-violence, tolerance, spirituality and a new trillion-dollar economy, India hosts the world's largest number of sexually abused children, at a far higher rate than any other country. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one in every four girls and one in every seven boys in the world are sexually abused, hardly encouraging, but still far below India’s totals.

Worse, child abuse is one of the least documented violations in the country, records author Grace Poore in the book, The Children We Sacrifice, which deals with the wide prevalence of child sexual abuse in India.

The reasons are manifold. In India, much like the rest of Asia, children are expected to respect and obey authority figures such as teachers, guidance counselors and principals and not question their actions. Rebellion is perceived as a sign of a bad upbringing. This sensibility perpetuates a culture of abuse by encouraging sexual predators.

Also, Indian adults often exercise a near-feudal hold over their children, demanding complete and unquestioned obedience. A culture of silence and shame also swirls around cases of sexual violence against children. Unsurprisingly, the notion of shame is the single largest culprit in perpetuating sexual violence against India’s children.

Ironically, despite the magnitude of the problem, Indian courts offer little panacea to victims. In fact the only legal recourse available to such victims is the extensions of “rape laws”, which apply to women and are stretched to apply to children as well.

But, as authorities point out, rape laws only recognize sexual crimes involving “penile penetration” and are totally dependent on medical evidence. Such evidence is difficult to procure as abuse is usually not one isolated case but a whole series of them. It may even involve episodes in which the offender doesn’t even touch the victim. Worse, the sexual molestation law covers all sexual offences “that outrage the victim’s modesty,” other than penetration. However, these two are bailable offences and only demand punishment of a maximum of two years in jail and/or a fine of few thousand rupees.

Though this law can be used in child sexual abuse cases, its reference to “unusual sexual offences” makes it difficult for child victims to use this option as a legal remedy. Since the definition of sexual abuse is nebulous, victims are largely at the mercy of the court’s discretion. On rare cases when abusers are booked after a cumbersome legal procedure, India’s conviction rate is so abysmal (despite the country’s sophisticated and complex set of laws), it seems like a Pyrrhic victory.

Apart from the legal dimension, child sexual abuse also has pronouncedly psychological and emotional elements. Worldwide surveys point out that such abuse negatively impacts a child’s physical, emotional and mental well-being, leading to severe behavioral and psychiatric disorders. Suicidal tendencies and drug abuse are common long-term effects.

A World Health Organization survey also points out that there is an unambiguous behavioral and emotional pattern in the abused. Usually the child hardly talks about the incident. And, even if he or she does, no one takes it seriously. That in turn triggers feelings of self doubt and guilt, exacerbating the child’s feeling that it is his or her fault. As the child matures, compulsive behavior reinforces this guilt. Small wonder that many adult sexual problems, according to psychoanalysts, trace their provenance to childhood abuse.

Charol Shakeshaft, a statistics professor in the School of Education and Allied Human Services at Hofstra University, New York, notes in her report, “Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature,” that “child sexual abusers, including educators and priests, use similar patterns of ‘grooming practices’ to break down a child's defenses. Often popular and well-regarded in their field, abusers engage in ‘systematic and premeditated grooming’ where they lavish special treatment on their intended victim buying presents or sharing secrets, for example and then advance to pornography.”

Where then, does the solution lie? Educating and enlightening kids about such issues, helping them distinguish between “good” and “bad” touch, is a partial answer, authorities say. Children also ought to be made aware of impulsive decisions they may make under pressure from peers, bullies and abusers. Sex education in schools is also productive. The Netherlands, a country where teenage pregnancy rates plummeted from 60 per cent to about 25 per cent through aggressive sex information campaigns in schools, is an example.

However, in India the issue of sexual abuse is still wedged between legal and policy commitments to children on the one hand, and the fallout of globalization on the other. A nationwide furor resulted after the government’s recent decision to introduce sex education in schools. The subject has divided opinion between camps who felt such a step would lead to unnecessary experimentation by curious teenagers and others who believed it would help whittle down cases of sexual abuse by creating widespread awareness.

In the meantime, with child sexual abuse attracting so much scrutiny and public debate, the government has the added impetus to adopt strong and unequivocal measures to contain such crimes. For a country with nearly 40 per cent of its populace comprised of children, such measures are overdue.

THE SILENT VICTIMS

By M H Ahssan

Sexual abuse of children is a very real problem in India, and the situation is aided by the absence of effective legislation and the silence that surrounds the offence.
Shockingly, over half the children in the country share Anjana's anguish. India has the dubious distinction of having the world's largest number of sexually abused children with a child below 16 years raped every 155th minute, a child below 10 every 13th hour, and one in every 10 children sexually abused at any point in time. These figures resoundingly break the silence that surrounds sexual abuse of children and perpetuates the evil.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), one in every four girls and one in every seven boys in the world are sexually abused. But Lois J. Engelbrecht, a researcher working on the problems of child sexual abuse, quotes studies showing that over 50 per cent of children in India are sexually abused, a rate that is higher than in any other country (see interview). Huma Khan of the Kanpur-based Centre for the Study of Human Rights terms child sexual abuse as one of the least documented violations. But studies made across India, documented in Grace Poore's resource book The Children We Sacrifice (which accompany the documentary on sexually abused girls) show the wide prevalence of the problem.

The Delhi-based Sakshi Violation Intervention Centre in a 1997 study that interviewed 350 schoolchildren, found that 63 per cent of the girl respondents had been sexually abused by a family member; 25 per cent raped, and over 30 per cent sexually abused by the father, grandfather or a male friend of the family. A 1999 study by the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences revealed that 58 of the 150 girls interviewed had been raped before they were 10 years old.

RAHI, a Delhi-based organisation that provides support to victims of sexual abuse, reports that of the 1,000 upper and higher-middle class college students interviewed, 76 per cent had been abused as children, 31 per cent by someone known to the family and 40 per cent by a family member, and 50 per cent of them before the age of 12.

"It is time we acknowledged the problem and did something about it," says Dr. Preethi Menon, a Chennai-based paediatric psychiatrist dealing with child sexual abuse. "Very simply," she says, "sexual abuse is when a powerful person uses a vulnerable person for sexual gratification." It can take several forms - from verbal, visual, tactile, exhibitionist and pornographic offences and fondling to anything that sexually stimulates the offender. The strategy of the offender can vary from tricking, luring, forcing and pressuring to threatening the victim. According to Dr. Preethi, it is an abuse of power and a violation of the child's right to a normal and trusting relationship.

The main cause of the high prevalence of child abuse in India is the way children are perceived - virtually as properties of adults. Says Lois: "It is also important how boys are treated as over 90 per cent of the abusers are men." Also, says the Bangalore-based child psychiatrist Dr. Shekar Seshadri, often, in protecting the family structure, decisions and judgments are based on the concept that the individual derives strength from the family, and it, in turn, from the community, and the community, from the country; this tends to drown the needs and trauma of the individual.

Says Radhika Chandiramani, coordinator of the Delhi-based TARSHI, an organisation that deals with reproductive and sexual health issues: "In India, children are expected to respect and obey adults. This is a major problem that perpetuates child sexual abuse." As Radhika points out, the children, taught to obey adults implicitly are abused only by adults and that too, from within the family. "How can the child say `no'?" she asks. "Yes" has no meaning when the child has no option to say "no". Yet, every child that is abused suffers from guilt and shame throughout his/her life.

According to Dr. Preethi, no child is safe; every child is vulnerable to sexual abuse. In her documentary "The Children We Sacrifice", Grace Poore calls sexually abused children the victims of a culture that prioritises family harmony, honour and duty more than individual trauma and pain. The "silence about sex" culture forbids parents from talking to their children about sexuality, and frowns upon any non-sexual intimate relationship with the opposite gender. The problem, according to the Chennai-based psychiatrist Dr. S. Vijayakumar, does not appear big simply because it is suppressed. These factors contribute to a high rate of child sexual abuse in India.

There are, according to Lois, primarily four driving factors that lead to child sexual abuse - the need to abuse a child sexually; convincing oneself about the act; building a good relationship with the people around the child; and gaining the child's trust. "There is thus," she says, "much time and a number of ways to stop child sexual abuse." Prevention, a recent report by the Delhi-based Voluntary Health Association of India argues, is easier especially as over 85 per cent of the offenders are those whom the children know and trust. Invariably, the familiarity and the trust they enjoy with the children - usually built over time - make them abuse the power over the children.

Prevention can be focussed at three levels. At the primary level, the focus can be on removing the causes, strengthening the child's competence to recognise and react, increasing parental awareness, strengthening social vigilance, and bringing in effective and punitive penal policy. At the secondary level, the emphasis should be on early detection, quick intervention and provision of a supportive environment in schools and families. Tertiary intervention should involve coordination among the police, courts, counsellors, doctors and social workers.

The offenders generally fall into two broad categories - paedophiles or fixated persons, and regressed individuals. While the first category plans the incident well and is more dangerous, the latter, which is more common in India, comes mostly from within the family. According to Lois, while sex abusers in general are clever, intelligent and manipulative, paedophiles are even more so - they fix their target and plan and execute the act meticulously. The regressed offenders usually abuse children to relieve the stress they are unable to cope with. Hence the victims of the regressed are usually children from within the family who are accessible and over whom they can exert power. Paedophiles, on an average, have 300 victims in their lifetime - though some are documented to have had over 1,000 - and the regressed five to seven victims. Anita Ratnam of the Bangalore-based Samvada, which supports victims of sexual abuse, says that sexual abuse episodes are the results of opportunistic, calculated and rational moves.

According to Lois, boys are equally affected by sexual abuse. She argues that it may be worse for them when men abuse them sexually. Many sexually abused boys develop the fear that they are homosexuals themselves or have been infected and have to become homosexuals. Also, Indian families do not protect boys as much as they do girls. This may also be responsible for over 90 per cent of sexual abusers being men.

Says Dr. Preethi Menon: "Sexual abuse has immediate as well as long-term effects on the child, from emotional and behavioural problems to abnormal sexual behaviour and psychiatric disorders. Suicidal tendencies and drug abuse are common long-term effects."

According to Dr. Vijayakumar, sexual abuse leaves a deep emotional scar in children primarily because the act is done secretively. He says: "There is a clear behavioural and emotional pattern in the abused." To begin with, the child hardly talks about the incident. And, even if the child does, no one takes her seriously. The child then begins to feel that there is something wrong with her and develops a low self-esteem. This pushes her into a guilt trap. As she grows up, her compulsive behaviour further reinforces her guilt. Several adult problems, according to him, have their roots in abuse in childhood.

The report by the Department of Women and Child Development on the implementation of the Convention of Child Rights in India, prepared for the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, has identified child sexual abuse as a priority issue for immediate action.

Although child abuse is rampant, India has no separate legislation to deal with it. The legal remedies available include the laws on rape (Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code), sexual molestation (Section 354 of the IPC) and sodomy (Section 377 of the IPC). But rape laws only recognise sexual crimes involving penile penetration, and are totally dependent on medical evidence. Such evidence is very difficult to get, as child sexual abuse is usually not one isolated incident but a series of incidents; it even involves episodes in which the offender does not touch the victim. The sexual molestation law covers all sexual offences "that outrage the modesty of the victim", other than penile penetration. However, these two are bailable offences and attract only punishments of a maximum of two years in jail and/or a fine of few thousand rupees. Only Section 377, which criminalises sodomy, is harsh. Though this section can be used in the case of child sexual abuse, its reference to "unusual sexual offences makes it difficult for child victims to use this option as a legal remedy. As there is no clear definition of sexual abuse, the victims are largely at the mercy of the judiciary's discretion, says Chennai-based lawyer R. Rajaram.

According to the VHAI report, a child victim suffers four times - at the time of the offence, when narrating the incident, during medical examination and if brought to the court. According to the study, the silence about sex-related matters and the lengthy and cumbersome legal procedures perpetuate the problem in India. The average time taken for a sexual abuse case to find its way from the lower courts to the higher courts is 10-15 years. Between 1992 and 1994, 48 cases of child sexual abuse were reported in the newspapers. The children affected were in the 8-10 age group, barring one who was six months old. The VHAI report argues that if and when the cases come to the courts for hearing, the children would have become adults and may want to erase the nightmare of their experiences from their consciousness. Dragging the children and their mothers to court for years, the report argues, is "secondary victimisation", and is often worse than the offence itself.

Child sexual abuse seems to be pervasive because, as Lois says, it is hardly spoken about, and even if it is, there are hardly any legal measures to deal with it. Court proceedings, if things come to that level, are a long-drawn, traumatic process. This, she argues, is what the abusers take advantage of.

Most often, sexually abused children make no noise about their traumatic experiences. It is this that encourages offenders. Dr. Preethi agrees that "this secrecy has to be broken"; for this, she lays stress on talking to children about sexual abuse, listening to them, believing them, and recognising symptoms such as physical complaints and behavioural and psychological changes. She says: "Silence does not mean all is fine with the child." A child's silence can be eloquent. Only, if we care to listen.

STUDENT SUICIDES - Pushed over the edge

By M H Ahssan

A spate of suicides by students in Lucknow has parents and school administrators equally worried. HNN reports on the reasons behind this alarming trend.
Priya Bose (14), Pinki Lal (17), Abhishek Tiwari (18) and Karvesh Choudhary (19) today exist only as impersonal case numbers in police diaries. Not too long ago, all four were teenagers with dreams and hopes. But varying degrees of stress pushed them over the edge last month, adding to the alarming numbers of young Indians who are killing themselves.

Bose was the first to go. A student of Lucknow's City Montessori School (CMS), she was driven to anxiety over her performance in the class eight final examination. Three months earlier, she had performed poorly in the half-yearly exams. Though she had been absent from school when the final exam answer sheets were shown to students (the school has a policy of showing these to the students before report cards are made, so that any discrepancies can be pointed out), she must have guessed that she wouldn't make it. So on March 30th this year, after having a cup of tea with her mother, she went up to her room, bolted herself in and used a bed sheet to hang herself by the ceiling fan. The stunned mother, who discovered the body, found a suicide note that read: "I am doing this because I am fed up and irritated with my life. Nobody but I am to be held responsible. Sorry Ma."

A day later, Lal, who had just finished giving her board examinations at New Public School, was found hanging from a fan in her room. Her parents told the police that she feared the ridicule that would follow in case her board results were poor. Two days after that, Tiwari, a class 11 student of a different branch of CMS, killed himself because he had successively failed in his science practical exams. Choudhary, a first year BTech student of the Saroj Institute of Management and Technology, hanged himself on the eve of his second semester engineering exams on April 8. He had failed in four papers in the first semester and had been denied re-examination. Lonely and away from his family, he made one final phone call to his father in Faizabad before hanging himself from the fan of his rented one-room accommodation.

Since then, 18 other young adults have taken their lives in Lucknow, throwing into disquiet school administrators, teachers, parents, counsellors and the government. According to the city's police, only five of these are clearly attributable to academic stress, a neat categorisation that falters when considering a case such as that of Pushpendra Kumar.

A class 11 student of Dayanand Inter College, Kumar hanged himself over his parents' refusal to allow him to attend his elder sister's pre-wedding ceremony. By his parents' own admission, Kumar was an outstanding student who had topped his class in the last exams. On April 16, he had a science practical exam but tried to convince his parents that he was well-prepared and hence should be allowed to be part of the ceremonies. When they refused, he hanged himself from an iron railing around the stairs in his double-storeyed home. Was Kumar then a victim of a family argument or academic stress? According to RC Jiloha, professor and head of the psychiatry department at Govind Ballabh Pant Hospital, New Delhi, "While the main cause for suicide is frustration, a belief that this life is not worth living, there may be a number of reasons that contribute to that feeling. Any one incident can act as a trigger."

SUICIDE WARNING SIGNS

- Radical change in daily routine
- Withdrawal from family and friends
- Sleeping too much or too little
- Any mention of suicide
- Loss of interest in everyday activities
- No sense of humour
- Feelings of excessive guilt or fault finding
- Being preoccupied with death or dying
- Neglecting personal appearance
- Performing poorly at work or in school
- Becoming too philosophical
- Making statements such as these:

'I cannot go on any longer'
'I hate this life'
There is no point in living anymore'
'Everyone would be better off without me'
'Nothing matters anymore' and
'I do not care about anything'

The Lucknow cases are worrying for two reasons. One, because overall, the incidence of suicides in Uttar Pradesh (UP) is low compared to most other states. According to data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) (http://ncrb.nic.in/ADSI2006/home.htm), of the 1,18,112 people who committed suicide in 2006, only 3,070 came from the country's most populated state, making it 20th in the aforementioned list. Two, while the national average is 10.5 suicides per lakh of population, the state's average is still less, standing at just 1.7. Only Manipur, Nagaland and Bihar report lower suicide rates than UP.

Yet, between 2002 and 2007, the state saw high numbers of suicides due to academic stress. In this period, the figures were 91, 105, 143, 93, 121 and 95 for each year respectively, making "failure in exams" the sixth most common reason for suicides in a list of 22 offered by the state's police department, alongside other grounds such as illness and family problems. While only two percent of suicides all over India are because of poor performance in exams, in UP this figure is almost double (lower only than West Bengal, where the rate is 4.4 percent). This could stem from the fact that in this Hindi heartland state, low on industrialisation, success lies only with those who become doctors, engineers or bureaucrats.

Perhaps the starkest note on the fragile mental health of the country's young is made by the NCRB. Till 1998, the bureau did not have a separate category of "persons under the age of 14" committing suicide, owing to the negligible numbers. But the numbers in this new category have steadily grown as have entries under the "failure in exams" head. In 2006-07, the number of deaths attributable to failure in exams across all age groups stood at 2,378. Of the 2,464 youngsters under the age of 14 who gave up on life, 512 were driven by failure in exams.

Worrying as these figures are, they might just be the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Suicide identification is a problem due to non-reporting, which in turn exists because of the social and legal consequences of such deaths, and is compounded by inefficient municipal registration systems. Conversely, suicides due to other reasons might also be tagged in the "failure in exam" category due to its comparative social acceptance over reasons such as failed loved affairs or teen pregnancies.

Understanding suicides is difficult as studies are based on assessments of survivors, not victims. While most teen suicides are impulsive acts, spurred on by feelings of absolute helplessness in the here and now, the reasons themselves could be deep standing. Thus the teen who kills himself or herself over a bad examination result will probably have a history of low self-worth, marginalisation by the peer group, lack of communication with parents and the like, all of which will be magnified by an upsetting event.

While growing up was always serious business, in today's India, an erosion of buffers and growing levels of competition have made it an even more complicated issue. The emphasis on success at all costs means that even five-year olds are being coached to clear entrance exams to prestigious schools. Parents who cough up the high fees for these schools in turn pressurise children to do well and get into colleges or professional courses of repute. Add to that the demise of the joint family, a lack of interest in sports and co-curricular activities, and the increasing isolation of the nuclear family, and what remains is a situation fraught with the possibility of mental and emotional breakdown. Moreover, while a galloping economy means a proliferation of opportunities, it also translates into a growing disconnect between abilities and aspirations. Being second best is no longer an option.

Instant gratification is another reason why children find it difficult to cope with life's disappointments. Pressed for time, parents try to compensate with pocket money and immediate fulfillment of children's demands, some of which are often unreasonable. A study conducted by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India's (Assocham) Social Development Foundation, titled 'Plight of Working Parents Towards their Children' and released earlier this year, concluded from a sample of 3,000 working couples that parents who work full time spend only 30 minutes with their children.

Another Assocham study of 2,500 children between the ages of 10-17, titled 'Trends of Pocket Money in Urban India', also released earlier this year, fills in the other dots. According to it, with the rise in income levels of parents, pocket money has risen by about six times to Rs 1,800 per month from Rs 300 per month over the past 10 years. The majority of this money goes towards fast food, soft drinks, clothing, gift articles, mobile recharge coupons, chocolates, cosmetics, magazines, computer games and movies. A related statistic is provided by a June 2006 study of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), according to which 58 percent of the teenagers who own mobiles spent between Rs 3,000 to Rs 7,500 on a handset, putting them only behind the 35-49 year age group.

Reena Tiwari, a resident of Lucknow and the mother of a bright 18-year-old who has recently given his class 12 exams from St Paul's School, provides the illustration to this statistic. "My son, otherwise a good student, would spend hours on the Internet looking up high-end mobile handsets. He never said he wanted one, but often spoke of peers who had brought the latest models. For all our belief in the virtues of waiting, we finally got him a handset worth Rs 15,000 to steer him back to his books," she says. It is reasonable to conclude that when such children, used to having their way within the cocoon of the family, face life's hard knocks, they find it difficult to handle the situation. Overall, this suggests a systematic failure of the family, the education system and the society at large.

On April 16, JS Rajput, former director of National Council of Educational Research and Training, tried to explain the problems in an article in the widely circulated Hindi daily Dainik Jagran: "A failure in examination is not a failure of the child, it is a failure of the whole system," he wrote.

Prabhat Sitholey, professor and head, department of psychiatry, Chattrapati Shahuji Maharaj Medical University (CSMMU), Lucknow, avers that the black hole in parental pressure is the belief that education is a one size fit all. "Just like genes for height and complexion are distributed normally within a given population, so is intelligence. We are wrong in believing that each child must at least pass class 10. Even within this framework, we are promoting an education that does not encourage the asking of questions or creativity. It is sheer drudgery. Each child is gifted separately and the educational system must define capabilities and strengths. Parental love should not depend on examination marks," he says. He also blames the media for sensationalising suicides. However, Jiloha from Delhi's Govind Ballabh Pant Hospital cautions against whipping the media. "Media reports will adversely affect only those who are gullible, they will appear suggestive only to those in a particular frame of mind," he says.

Krishna Dutt, clinical psychologist at CSMMU, whittles down the reasons behind teen suicides to the I's of impatience and individualism. "There is no time to wait and watch as patience levels are falling across generations. While individualism leads to growth and development, it also causes us not to learn from the experiences of others," he says. On the day Dutt speaks to us, he is counselling a 19-year-old, who is so unnerved about her engineering exams that she cries when asked to speak.

Tears are just one sign that something is drastically wrong. Most cues tend to be more muted and easy to miss (also see box alongside). So easily missed in fact that even traditional psychology held that a child was essentially incapable of depression. Modern psychology, however, holds that signs of depression in a child are merely different from those in adults. Thus a child who is consistently irritable or aggressive, prone to behavioural problems such as constantly seeking attention, or addiction to something, is crying for help and is not simply a 'problem' child.

"Parents are too wrapped in their expectations to notice what a child really needs and often the child blurs the distinction between himself and the parents thinking of himself as merely an extension of his parents and a tool to further their ambitions," says Nalini Sharad, principal of CMS. She illustrates her contention with the example of a class 10 student who despite being severely sick ignored the advice of doctors and came to write her board exams with a drip attached to her. "She threatened to commit suicide if not allowed to write the exams and the parents did not try to reason with her even once. In such a situation, what does the school do?" wonders Sharad.

Schools are also handicapped by the lack of access to child and educational psychologists, an issue that has to be looked at in conjunction with the low numbers of trained psychologists available in the country as a whole. According to the World Health Organization (Atlas: Country Profiles on Mental Health Resources 2001), India, which lacks a national policy on mental health, has just 0.4 psychiatrists, 0.04 psychiatric nurses, 0.02 psychologists and 0.02 social workers per 100,000 population. Moreover, the availability of mental health professionals is restricted to mostly the larger urban centres. Given this situation, it's not surprising schools do not have access to mental health services. The few schools that offer the services of counsellors do so only for career guidance.

Alok Sinha, psychologist and motivational trainer, points to a lack of understanding on the nature of counselling. "Receptionists at computer training institutes who provide information on courses are termed counsellors as are clerks who allot colleges on the basis of marks. A counsellor is a listener, not a provider of information. But even highly educated parents who approach us for counselling their children merely want us to make the children comply with the parents' wishes. Even when it comes to extra-curricular activities, all they want is for the child to be the best, and say, win a reality contest," he says.

Within the state's secondary education department, there is little acknowledgement of the department's own role and failings in making education the nightmarish experience that it is today. Stock replies about lack of staff and resources are given to explain why the department has not overhauled the board examination system that catered to 40 lakh students this year.

SUICIDE PREVENTION

- Remain calm
- Ask the child directly if s/he is thinking of committing suicide
- Focus your concern on their well-being and avoid being accusatory
- Listen
- Reassure them that there is help and they will not feel like this forever
- Do not judge
- Provide constant supervision. Do not leave the youth alone.
- Remove means for self-harm.
- Peers should not agree to keep the suicidal thoughts a secret and instead should tell an adult. Parents/school staff should seek help as soon as possible.

Sarvesh Kumar, an additional director at the department, is a rare voice of despair. "The government spends Rs 2,700 crores as salary for the staff of this department. Yet there are no measures of performance. The lone figure of students appearing for the board examination cannot be a criterion to judge our performance. We are least bothered about the quality of education being imparted and will resort to strikes at the least provocation. We are not expected to deliver, merely to keep the machinery functioning in its present state," he says.

Kumar's contention is borne out by the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), brought out by the non-government organisation Pratham. According to the 2007 ASER (Rural) report (http://www.pratham.org/aser07/aser2007.php), in UP, 3 out of 10 children in class 1 to 8 cannot read capital letters, while 7 of 10 cannot recognise numbers between 1 and 99.

At a seminar on the causes of suicide, organised in the second week of April, principal secretary of secondary education, AK Misra, elaborated on the educational system's failure. "Of the 16,000 inter-colleges in UP, only 160 can lay claim to offering quality education. Thus only five percent of those with aspirations have access to quality resources. Private schooling has become completely profit- and result-oriented. The child is filled with worry about whether he will be allowed to write the board exam or will be held back so that the school's results are not affected negatively. By raising fees, the stakes have been artificially upped, as parents who are called upon to pay exorbitant amounts will expect their children to do well at any cost. There is no getting away from the fact that we need swift policy changes or our children will be driven to meltdown," he warned.

There are no easy answers on what these changes should be. As a first step, we need to talk about the issue and improve the systems of reporting and recording suicides. As part of its Suicide Prevention Programme, the World Health Organization suggests a comprehensive approach that involves the departments of health, police and education besides religious leaders, families and the media. This would be in addition to school-based interventions involving crisis management, self-esteem enhancement and the development of coping skills and healthy decision-making. Better communication within the family, greater acceptance of a child's abilities and a more flexible examination system would also help. Ultimately each one of us shares the responsibility to help the young around us cope with the turbulence of coming of age.

CHILD MOLESTATION AND RAPE - Incest and the conspiracy of silence

By M H Ahssan

Social attitudes that put family 'honour' above the damage caused to children keep incest from being properly addressed. A recent surge in reports of incest is shedding more light on the difficulties in overcoming this.

The Mira Road expose of a father's sexual abuse of his daughter for nine years has opened a Pandora's box of similar cases of incest across the country. Increasingly, this is also shedding light on the legal system's shortcomings in dealing with incest, as well as on social attitudes that hinder effective solutions.

The Indian legal statutes do not contain any specific provisions against incest. Many developed countries such as Britain, the US and Germany have strong laws against incest. UK, which made incest punishable in 1908, sets a prison term of 12 years for the offence. Punishment in the US varies from one state to another; extending to 20 years in the state of Massachusetts, while in Hawaii it is five years. Some countries have, however, abolished or diluted their laws against incest - this is invariably because many of them viewed sexual partnerships between closely related persons - even adults - as incestuous, and in recent years there has been some liberalisation of their views on this. Incest involving minors, on the other hand, is uniformly frowned upon in the developed world (and is also the specific focus of this article).

As everywhere else in the world, in India too incestuous conduct is almost never consensual. Instead, it is rooted in physical force as well as familiar and other power which the abuser uses to pressure his victim. Nor is child abuse by parents and other elders confined to a single political ideology or to one economic system. It transcends barriers of age, class, language, caste, community, sex and even family. The only commonality is power, which triggers and feeds incest in families. This power is multiplied several times over when the relationship between the abuser and the abused is of father and daughter. Disbelief, denial and cover-up to 'preserve the family reputation' are often then placed above the interests of the child and its abuse.

Some years ago, in a popular late-night legal-awareness television serial Bhramar, one episode explored the true case of a father impregnating his 14-year-old daughter after abusing her sexually for months together while the mother was forced to remain silent. For fear of a public scandal, the parents decided to poison the girl. The paternal grandfather, the sole witness to the murder, complained to the police. But the perpetrator went scot-free on the argument that he had other children to care for, and if he were to go to prison, they would be orphaned! When the criminal was set free, the older man left the home and was never seen again.

A report from RAHI, (Recovering and Healing from Incest), a Delhi-based NGO working with child sexual abuse titled Voices from the Silent Zone suggests that nearly three-quarters of upper and middle class Indian girls are abused by a family member - often by an uncle, a cousin or an elder brother. Anuja Gupta, founder-executive director of RAHI says, "Not legislating a strict punishment amounts to the law reiterating that it is not a serious issue. If stringent punishment were made legal, then it has to be accepted that incest exists. But we don't even want to admit that. It is treated more like an aberration so there is no harsh punishment. This is true across the world and it is a terrible truth to own up to."

A 1985 study by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences revealed that one out of three girls and one out of 10 boys had been sexually abused as a child. Fifty per cent of child sexual abuse happens at home. In 1996, Samvada, a Bangalore-based NGO, conducted a study among 348 girls. 15 per cent were used for masturbation mostly by male relatives when they were less than 10 years old. Seventy- five per cent of the abusers were adult family members.

Vidya Reddy, who runs Tulir-CPHCSA (Centre for Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse) in Chennai, says, "Most people imagine abusers to be shadowy and frightening strangers with a psychiatric disorder. In fact, often an abuser is a 'regular' person who leads a 'routine' life and is known to the victim, but has no inhibition or qualms over having sex with children." This was proved to be true in the Mira Road case. Neighbours and local residents who know Chauhan well were shocked because he appeared to be a decent and well-behaved person.

Women's rights activist and lawyer Flavia Agnes opines, "In most cases of sexual abuse, it is the father who is responsible for the heinous crime. He is the custodian of the child. So a case of custodial rape should also look at the father as a suspect. Somewhere, we do not want to interfere with our family values and choose to keep quiet about such cases." The tight-knit family structure, the domineering role of the fathers and uncles, the submissiveness of women who are mute witnesses to gross injustice and the ingrained tendency not to allow "family shame" to be exposed whatever the cost, are factors that help the abusers get away with it all.

But there are those who disagree with this view. One expert with a contrary view is Mohammad Abdul Kalam, professor of Anthropology at the University of Madras who says that cases of incest should be seen as individual perversions and believes that stricter laws would not bring down incest in Indian society.

Legal lacuna
What Ramalingam does not say is that the same father cannot be held under the law for anything called 'incest.' Indian laws do not even recognize incest as a crime, though rape and sexual abuse, especially of minors, are serious crimes relating to incest. The Delhi High Court is considering framing guidelines for conducting investigation and prosecution in crimes relating to incest, in the wake of several incest cases surfacing at present. But Ramalingam believes that the existing laws would suffice to punish the perpetrators of crimes like incest and CSA (criminal sexual assault).

Child rights activists have long been demanding a more clearly defined law to prosecute perpetrators of incest. In 1983, the law against rape was amended to include policemen, hospital and prison staff who abused women in their custody which amounted to custodial rape. But it did not include sexually abusive fathers, whose sexual abuse of a daughter is the worst form of custodial rape.

Legal Loopholes
- There is no central law on child abuse.
- Laws dealing with sexual offences do not specifically address child sexual abuse.
- The India Penal Code 1860 does not recognise child abuse. Only rape and sodomy can lead to criminal conviction.
- Anything less than rape, as defined by the law, amounts to 'outraging the modesty.' These laws are already problematic when applied to adult women. They are even more difficult when applied to children.
- While sec. 376 IPC seeks to provide redress against rape to women, it rarely covers the broad range of sexual abuse (particularly of children), that actually takes place.
- Most of these forms of abuse are sought to be covered under sec. 354 of the Indian Penal Code as a violation of a woman's modesty. Though offences under Sec. 354 of the IPC are cognizable, they are also bailable, allowing the perpetrator to abscond before the case comes up in court.
- The Juvenile Justice Act, amended and rewritten in 2000, makes no attempt to identify sexual abuse on children. Sec. 23 of the Act deals with assault, exposes, willful neglect, mental and physical suffering, for which imprisonment prescribed, is only for 6 months.
- Section 5 of the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act 1956 prescribes punishment of not less than 7 years for inducing a child into prostitution, but does not directly address child abuse.
- The word 'rape' within law, is too specific because it does not include abuse on boys.
- 'Intercourse' is often interpreted to mean with an 'adult' and almost always implies 'consensual' sex.

Supporting the victim
Sudha Ramalingam, lawyer and activist with the People's Union for Civil Liberties points out that if a father perpetrates abuse on his daughter, he could be arrested for custodial offences. "But in a society like India, the family wants to protect both the perpetrator and the victim. That is why most of such crimes go unnoticed. They are anxious to protect the child's future and safeguard the reputation of the family. The psychological and physical impact it would have on a child is rarely taken into consideration."

Says Delhi-based senior consulting psychiatrist Dr. Sanjay Chugh, "child sexual abuse often comes to light when childhood histories are explored and in most cases the perpetrator is a known person who is close to the family or inside the family." He is concerned about the effect of incest on the victim. "The psychological harm on the victim is massive as it evokes doubts, raises questions for which answers are not easy to get. The victim may suppress emotions or be filled with feelings of rage, guilt and shame. It is difficult for such victims to trust others later on in life. The victim needs to stand up for himself/herself and not to allow the trauma to make them psychologically and socially weak. Active social support from family, friends, guidance centres and counsellors can bring the victim's faith in the goodness of human beings back," he explains.

"People need to realize and accept incest as a part of our society that happens in every socio-economic group. Closing our eyes and getting into the denial mode will not make the problem go away. We need to spread the word at a mass level where people are made aware not only about its existence but also about the help available. Workshops in schools and colleges that highlight such problems should be conducted for children and teachers to become more sensitized. Parents need to be educated about how they can protect their children or help those who have suffered. We need to take the responsibility of educating each other, reaching out to each other and take active steps to stop this physical, psychological and social pain that gets inflicted upon innocent lives," Dr. Chugh sums up.

Incest, he says, will persist as long as the collective conspiracy of silence within the family, the state and the society allows it to go on.

Zoozoo: The new brand 'endorser' for Vodafone

By Jay Makwana

Some find them akin to aliens; others insist they are animated cartoon characters, while a third bunch doesn’t quite know what to make of it. Nevertheless, we have all been privy to these white, scrawny creatures with giant heads as they invade our TV screens during an IPL match.

In 2008, Vodafone had unveiled the ‘Happy to Help’ series during the first season of the Indian Premier League (IPL). With the launch of the second season, Vodafone has given birth to the Zoozoo: a special character created specifically to convey a value added service (VAS) offering in each of the newly released commercials.

What’s interesting is that there are some 25 such commercials planned under this campaign, 10 of which are already on air. The aim is to release approximately one ad a day, to sustain interest till the end of the IPL.

So what’s with so many?

It’s no mean feat to unleash so many commercials at a go, with the risk of consumers not grasping them as fast as the brand churns them out.

Explains Harit Nagpal, chief marketing officer, Vodafone India, “We’re acquiring customers at a very fast pace, but a large number of them are unaware of the range of services we offer. I mean, ‘phone backup’, which we’re advertising now, was launched two years ago, for instance!”

Media spends and visibility for brands peak during the IPL, so Vodafone obviously wanted a piece of the pie. Further, Nagpal explains, the brand was in need of an idea that would work doubly hard, as it was planning to spend some four months’ worth of marketing monies in one month. “So, we chose not to do just one or two ads, or viewers would get bored quickly, watching them over and over on the IPL,” says Nagpal.

Six months ago, Vodafone briefed its agency, Ogilvy India, to create uncommon characters – a common thread to link the ads in the campaign together. Rajiv Rao, executive creative director, South Asia, Ogilvy India, tells afaqs! that the only starting point for the team was that the character had to be simple to a stupefying level. And thus, the Zoozoo was born.

You egghead!

Ogilvy experimented with several characters and finally took its love for the term ‘egghead’ one step too far, creating characters that don the colour white (with black dots for eyes and a mouth), have heads resembling eggs, and disproportionately thin bodies.

The idea is to tell the VAS stories in a world akin to, yet different, from humans. The creatures were then given a characterisation: they are to lead simple lives, speak a language of their own (something that sounds like gibberish), move in a certain way, and even emote like human beings, with big frowns or big grins to do the trick. The execution is almost like emoticons. “We even limited the number of emotions to be used, to keep things easy,” says Rao.

A completely Indian concept, Rao lent these characters a name: the Zoozoos. There’s no science to it, he explains – the name just had to be something fun, memorable and catchy, and not a clever one that’s difficult to pronounce.

Ironically, nowhere in the communication does the Zoozoo name pop up, but Rao doesn’t feel that’s much of a problem: it wasn’t a task to popularise the name in the first place.

Currently, some10 films are on air, for service offerings such as Cricket Alerts, Beauty Alerts, Phone Backup, the IPL Contest 1, the IPL Contest 2, Chhota Credit, Vodafone Maps, Vodafone Call Filter, Live Games and Musical Greetings. Each film, shot against a Grey backdrop, has these characters interacting with one another (some storylines even have Zoozoo families) with the product story weaved in.

For instance, the Phone Backup ad (the first in the series) has several Zoozoos lined up to have their faces photocopied through a photocopier, while a tetris towards the end (the messenger in all the ads) announces how Vodafone allows for creating a phonebook backup.

Making of the Zoozoo
No, they aren’t animated characters. They are human beings who were made to wear body suits. “The design of the characters is such that one gets fooled into thinking it is animation,” shrugs Rao, which was indeed the very illusion that had to be created. “In a sense, it is ‘live’ animation!” he quips, referring to the fact that it was all shot live.

Prakash Varma, ad filmmaker, Nirvana Films, has directed the commercials, and reveals that the Zoozoos were a big challenge to create. The practical aspects of how they will move, talk, gesticulate and emote were very important. Essentially, costume design and artwork were crucial elements.

“It took me three weeks of pre-production to understand how it will work,” says Varma. There were two fabrics that were considered for the body suits, and one was rejected for it had too many wrinkles and was shiny. The wrinkles would have shown when the characters moved, thereby shattering the illusion of animation. “So we chose the more practical, thicker fabric,” Varma explains.

The production team divided the outfit into two parts: the body and the head. The body part of the outfit was stuffed with foam in some places, while the head was attached separately. To make it look bigger than a human head, a harder material called Perspex was used, which in turn was stuffed with foam (with scope for ventilation).

If one wishes to understand the size of this head, here’s a fact: a human head would typically reach up to the mouth level of this giant Zoozoo head. “We kept the hands and legs thin, which is why we cast women – and occasionally children – wearing the costumes,” says Varma. The thin limbs, contrasted with big bellies and a bulbous head, all add to the illusion that these creatures are ‘smaller’ than humans. Sets were created to suit the size of the Zoozoos.

Cinematically, this ‘size’ was a trick: the creatures look smaller than they actually are on screen, to portray a different world of sorts. For this, the speed of shooting was altered: Nirvana shot it in a high-speed format to make them look the size that they do.

Furthermore, simple sets/backdrops were created and spray painted with neutral Greys – a colour of choice so that attention isn’t diverted from the main characters. For a supposedly ‘outdoor’ shot, even the shadow of a Zoozoo was kept ‘live’ and not done in post production: it was painted in a darker shade of grey on the ground. An even lighting was maintained throughout.

There was virtually no post production work done.

The films were shot by Nirvana in Cape Town, South Africa, with the help of a local production house there, called Platypus. Incidentally, the same combination of people also worked on the ‘Happy to Help’ series last year. When asked whether Cape Town is fast becoming a tourist spot for Vodafone and Nirvana, Varma laughs, saying, “Oh no! It’s just that we are very comfortable with the team there and know what sort of work to expect from them.”

Nagpal adds here that the production cost had to be minimal for unveiling such a large number of commercials. “Otherwise, our production costs would exceed media spends,” he quips.

Zoozoos: storming the digital world
In the digital space, Zoozoos are currently featured on a specially created microsite – here, one can partake in quizzes and contests, including the ‘What kind of Zoozoo are you?’ quiz. Each Zoozoo has a unique set of characteristics and traits allotted to it. The microsite also allows for goodies to be downloaded (including wallpapers, screensavers and ringtones), and offers details on the IPL. With a specially created YouTube channel on the site, the TVCs are provided there for people to watch and share.

Apart from the microsite, a Zoozoo fan page has been created on Facebook, which has more than 5,600 members. Fans have access to special tag-me images, Zoozoo sounds (such as Zoozoo laughter and music tracks) and ad previews. People are also following Zoozoos on Twitter and get updates whenever new commercials go on air.

Zoozoo ads are fast becoming popular on YouTube, and on certain days, claims Nagpal of Vodafone, some of the videos even managed to figure among the most watched lot on the site.

The team behind the Vodafone-Zoozoo work includes Rao, along with Kiran Anthony, Elizabeth Dias, Rajesh Mani, Mehul Patil, Kumar Subramaniam, Kapil Arora, Debaleena Ghosh and Desmond Fernandes.

Zo, what do zoo think?
Zoozoos clearly seem to be a favourite amongst the ad fraternity. From the name ‘Zoozoo’ to the painted eyes and mouth, Brijesh Jacob, managing partner, White Canvas, says he has not seen anything like it. “They have a certain madness to them, which makes them likeable and memorable,” he says.

In the past, too, Orange and then Hutch (the earlier avatars of Vodafone in India) had made use of characters – an animated boy-girl duo – to whip up its VAS offerings before consumers. But those characters were limited by their definition, unlike the Zoozoos, where an entire world of such characters has been etched. “Zoozoos come in all shapes and sizes; kids, mother, friends, individuals…there does not seem to be a set format to use them,” Jacob adds, which makes the possibilities endless.

Satbir Singh, chief creative officer, Euro RSCG, shares his own Zoozoo story: “Every time the commercial gets over, my two-year old son Angad hands me the remote and demands to watch it again. The other day, a waiter at a club mixed up my order as he was too busy watching the ad during IPL!” That pretty much sums up the ‘Zooperb’ impact, as he puts it.

While many would say that Zoozoos are cute, not all are in accord with this new being. Mythili Chandrasekar, senior vice-president and executive planning director, JWT India, says, “I think Vodafone has made delightful stories in the past with humans as well. Maybe I’m too old, so I didn’t particularly like the Zoozoos personally.”

She attributes it to her personal dislike of the sci-fi type genre of communication, or the creation of something abstract that doesn’t exist.

Some feel that the Zoozoos could well become a part of the brand story, instead of just being used for this VAS oriented campaign. But this comes with a warning tag: one has to be careful about letting the Zoozoos become bigger than the brand or the message. “Vodafone shouldn’t get stuck with a format,” says Jacob of White Canvas. “They did suffer this to a certain extent with the pug.”

The Bondage between Two Souls

By Samiya Anwar

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains, an age old but true cliché. We are born freely but enslaved by self and others. By others, I mean people. We are in bonds. We are in ties everywhere. Hence we are in chains. And why not, it is God who made us social creatures. So we are meant to have social interaction and relationships with others. And by self, we are slaves of our own soul.

Though it is a harsh reality, it is cruelty Yes—Man is his own friend, he also is his own enemy. The heart and mind have different things to say, not always same Sometimes we listen to our hearts, we suffer, and sometimes we’re benefited. Other times when we hear our minds, we likely get oppressed and repressed despite advantageous. There is in some kind of burden we are living with. The bondage, which not let us free, there is some weight in every relationship. Moreover all relationships seem confusing and hopeless at times, where we need discernment in them.

Like when we’re born we are introduced to several relationships. Mother, father, brother, sister, grand father, grand mother, maternal-paternal uncles and aunts, cousins, etc and as we grow, we enter a new world of school and play which gives us friends and more ties. There are many ways in which people can be 'connected' to each other, and that many of those connections can create a deep sense of closeness, intimacy and togetherness. In those, there is also someone who is not really known, as a relationship to us and in hereafter we get into a very strong association with that person. A kind of a knot or connection lies between the two. The special bond or tie which not necessary you know or you many not. That can be with a whole-new stranger, your close friend, a cousin or some one in the kith and kin. Very likely, this is what we call a soul tie or soul connection.

And now, let me get to the heart of the matter forthrightly “The bondage between two souls”. When we hear the term “two souls” a passion arose inside. Our minds click to a romantic movie, or we take a trip to heaven thinking of soul mates. Does actually soul mates exist or it is we trying to seek it in our relationships. Sushma and Rajat, a couple said, “They found soul mate in each other” in the first month of marriage. Did they really get the one or they are just on fantasying zone, I wonder. Because in the beginning of a relationship everything seems to be rosy and lovely, with time, romance flee in air and the word “soul mate” commenced missing. They complained often of not knowing each other fully. Sushma says Rajat has a dominating attitude and she feels upset and more like a servant than wife. If they are soul mates, then what is the problem I ponder? Why? Why is it so? The bondage, rules!

I think the majority of people on earth regardless of their standing are slaves to themselves than others. One loves thyself more than thy neighbor, relative, spouse or anyone else. We are cruel and slaves of ourselves. The key is being mutually satisfied. If we’re not satisfied we find fault. What we want is satisfaction from life and others in life. Aren’t we?

Although everyone has a different story to tell, at some point we can easily be mistaken because we’re in slavery in relationship. Some enjoy the feeling of helplessness for its own sake. Says Zoya, a housewife who loves to surrender and sacrifice her own self for the sake of successful relationship. She is ready to put the labor to save marriage for being its sacred. It is not just Zoya, many other women sense and tolerate all kinds of abuse and mistreat by husbands and lovers as think they are bonded not just physically or sexually and not even for surnames, the emotional tie or soul tie oppresses them to give up. They happily loose themselves. But some women hate themselves for doing that and some struggles aggressively to come out of it. Alike Saumya, a bank employee who is in matrimony for six years finds it difficult to “to say yes” to her husband always. A kind of domination she feels inside the heart being very successful in career and life. She also says there is no need one feels repressed because men and women are equal. But Lalit, a software engineer opines that men rule the world and dominates the society being the gender superior. It isn't always easy to tell what kind of problem lies between two people.

If the “one” of the “two” is selfish and controlling, the relationship is likely to become dangerous, because your souls are knit together, emotionally and this is no longer make you feel of a Godly kind of soul bond. Here comes a form of bondage and enslavement again. The misunderstanding develops and hatred fills the mind with devil thoughts. That’s why relationships break instead of getting together. The “two souls” which are meant for together part ways and the seriousness of relationship goes astray. Yet, being in a problem is a strange experience,—peculiar one, we all knows.

As it is said that the closest relationship is of a man with women, say husband-wife or lover-beloved. The relationship of “two souls” is blessed because comfort is not in being alone, but being with someone, it is not spiritually or emotionally, but the two people need to put a lot of labor and effort to have a successful relation. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know what to do or who to seek help from. If your bond is true, and wish to have “life-long bond, the Holy Spirit inside you will teach, how to have this kind of relationship. But remember you need to be self-less and have to develop the “giving” quality. Because it takes two souls to have a pure and giving heart that put their love in action. Be mindful, “The soul mates are not found, they are made from all the bondages of life”. Moreover, it is no easy; I think hope is a wonderful concept. So best of luck!